


The Kissing Traditions of Monsea

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: Bitterblue - Kristin Cashore, Seven Kingdoms Trilogy - Kristin Cashore
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Implied Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The library smells of ink and paper - and nothing like blood.</p><p>Thank you to Marycontraire for the speedy beta!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kissing Traditions of Monsea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Senji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senji/gifts).



The library smells of ink and paper - and nothing like blood. Death finds these smells comforting. No, comforting isn’t the right word. There’s little comfort in Monsea, at least for Death. Reassuring, perhaps. Shielding. Isolating.

He is the librarian of a library with only one patron. Most days, Leck has other _business_ to attend to, business that leaves Death to his books and his cats and cooling cups of over-brewed tea. On those days, Death reads, mind memorizing pages the way a parent might memorize their child’s face, something that, once seen, cannot be unlearned.

 

Death has a brother, an ungraced tailor with a wife so beautiful people look to her eyes to see if they’re different colors. They find them clouded from the illness that took her sight as a girl. Death’s brother and his wife have a daughter, a little wild thing, ugly as her father and kind as her mother.

When Death used to visit her as a tot, she would climb on his lap, steal candy that he hid in his pockets, listen as he read her stories about kingdoms far away, daring adventures. She liked pirate stories about narrow escapes and daring-do. He imagines her in the crow’s nest of a ship, skin chapped by wind and sun, surveying the vast expanse of ocean far from here. He does not visit anymore, not since -

They write letters, his brother and he, meaningless things about the weather and the price of cloth in Leck City and Death’s newest book. Death thinks about ciphering them, using his niece’s name as the key, spreading it out over words, pages. It feels dangerous to even write. His brother includes swatches of cloth, fabric designs he’s toying with, new textures that he makes for his wife to run her fingers over. It would not take much to cipher the patterns, to send back modifications. He only needs to write two words, to make his brother remember those as he remembers his own name.

Death sometimes finds himself at his desk, pen poised over paper. He’ll hold the pen until it spatters ink, great drops of it that he drags his sleeves through, later. Leck interrupts him there once, on a search for a book for the princess, asks benignly to whom Death is writing, as if the mail from the castle isn’t monitored.

“My brother, Lord King” Death says. “He’s a tailor in the city.” He swallows, puts the pen down. One of the library cats rubs against Death’s ankles, oblivious to the conversation above.

“Oh,” Leck says. “Not graced, perhaps?”

“No, Lord King. He’s -” Death fusses with his papers, nearly tips the inkpot before righting it. “Ordinary.”

“Ah,” Leck says. “And is his family well?”

“They’re -” Death begins, because he hasn’t mentioned his brother having a family.

The cat - he calls this one Ink for the dark black of its bristle-brush tail - upends the water bowl under Death’s desk, onto Death’s shoes. He starts, though he knows not to hide his face from Leck without permission. Leck is feeling generous, perhaps, because he gives the slightest of nods, a long blink with his remaining eye. Death stoops, recovers the bowl and gets a hiss from a wet, disgruntled Ink, inhales deeply, and stands again.

“All is well in Leck City, Lord King” Death says.

“Good, good,” Leck says, distracted and a little haughty. “There’s a volume I was looking for, for the Princess -”

 

Death finishes his evening as he always does, writing lines as he did as a child, punishment for small misdeeds. He choses a familiar cipher system that night, one he is as conversant in as he is common language. He writes only two words, but the cipher is a repeating one with three alphabets, so it has the appearance of more varied text.

“Leck lies,” he writes. “Leck lies. Leck lies. Leck lies.”

He burns the papers in the library hearth, wary of fire, extinguishes it with a nearby pitcher of water. Steam hisses off the coals, puffs in his face, but it feels good, clears his mind of all other thoughts but this one truth.

 

His brother sends him an invitation to a Kissing party. Before Leck’s reign, Death had little time for such diversions, didn’t like the paint or the glitter, the way people could be easy with their affections in ways he never seemed to master. He has his books, his endless catalog filled with more adventures than anyone could see in a thousand lifetimes. He has his books, and his cats, and his tea.

Now, he longs to go, but cannot, sends his regrets about the busy pace of castle life, and his love to the family. He cannot go so far as to write his niece’s name, has asked once, before they last parted that his brother not put it in letters, nor his wife’s name. There are kidnappers, Death had said. Ones who read others’ letters.

“There is no such trouble in Monsea,” his brother had said, clapping Death on the shoulder with his the flat of his hand, but had obliged.

Death spends the night of the Kissing Party in the library, reading over an old favorite, a tale of a sea voyage wrecked by storm, the plucky survivors making do on a remote but fertile island. He imagines his niece sitting on his lap, just this side of too big to be held like a child, listening as he reads, asking him impossible questions about the plant life of the forest they first land, if they live in tents in the high-up canopies of trees, if they ever leave the island.

He won’t have the heart to tell her the story ends without resolution, will invent the distant sails of a ship over the horizon, the promise of rescue.

Death gets little pleasure from rereading - he does not forget, so finds little that he takes joy in remembering - but this scene, this moment, he lets himself imagine. The girl cannot read, most likely. His brother knows the simple words Death writes, and her mother cannot teach her, though she has learned the intricacies of pattern. Death takes solace in this fact. Leck has an interest in precocious little girls. Her ignorance protects her.

He puts down the tome without finishing it or his tea, which has brewed to the point of being unpalatable. He knows how the story ends, anyway.

 

Leck comes to the library the next morning. There’s talk of fires in Leck City, a bookshop that ignited because of a carelessly tended hearth, how it spread to neighboring shops before a bucket brigade could form.

“Estillian history, today, Death,” he says, voice cheerful. “And a bestiary. I’m of the mind to take a stroll outside, and it’s good for a king to know what he’s looking at.”

It’s snowing out, white covering the ground. Death nods and does not think of the animal cages on the far end of the castle, of Ink’s predecessor who’d disappeared one day. “Of course, Lord King. At once.” He slides out from behind his desk, careful not to show his back. Leck’s high spirits sometimes sour quickly.

“Oh, and Death?” Leck says. “I have another request.”

Death stops. “Of course, Lord King. I am at your disposal.”

“I have taken an interest in ciphers,” Leck says. “Though Monsea is at peace, and I have no need for spies, I wish to understand the operations of other kingdoms.”

“Ciphers, Lord King. Of course,” Death says. “I will be happy to provide a selection for your perusal.”

“You are a loyal servant, Death.”

“Thank you, Lord King,” Death says, then hurries into the stacks on the pretense of finding the requested books.

He has read all but one of the volumes Leck asked for, the last ciphering manual, but he pages through it frantically, eyes skimming as much as he can, before hefting it onto the cart. It shows ciphering based not on lettering but on phonemes, impossible to memorize quickly and well.

It requires an accompanying syllabary, which he weighs fetching from the shelves. Doing so will curry Leck’s good favor, but failing to do so will delay Leck’s research by perhaps half a week, long enough for Death to devise another set of ciphers to use, a one-time sheet that he can smuggle to his brother, perhaps, as a disguised textile sample.

He returns with five heavy volumes, including the syllabary, huffing as he pushes them on a cart. There’s little point in concealing library resources from Leck - the first time he’d done so, he’d attempted to make it look like an accident. The death of his first cat was also an apparent accident.

“Please let me know if there’s any other way I can be of assistance, Lord King,” he says. “I am yours to command.”

That night, Death writes his lines not in cipher, but in plain language. He burns them completely into a metal bucket he obtains from one of the servants, picks through the doused ashes for anything that could be reassembled into a message.

 

It’s a week later when Leck returns. Servants had brought the borrowed volumes back a day earlier. Leck arrives, resplendent in blue robes, asks for several books on art.

He’s in a philosophical mood, meaning one of the castle artists may disappear soon, or one has and it hasn’t reached Death’s notice.

“Are you an artist, Death?” His voice is soft, no more dangerous seeming than the purr of a cat.

Death swallows, once, mouth dry. Leck is looking at him, expectantly. There’s a cup of tea, now cold, perhaps dusty, at Death’s right hand. He runs the tips of his fingers over the sharp edge of the porcelain, a slight chip catching the edge of nail.

“I couldn’t say, Lord King,” Death says, finally. “I suppose something of being an artist is whether others think of you as one.”

Leck considers this for a moment. “And your brother, The tailor in the city? Is he an artist? Do you think of him as one?”

“He is a tailor, Lord King,” Death says, but then bites his own tongue. A foolish slip, insolent.

Leck smiles, shows the white points of his teeth. “A tailor,” he says, as if the word offends him. “Perhaps he should be issued an invitation, then. Indulge the court’s whim.”

“That is most kind, Lord King,” Death says. “But he is a simple tailor. I am afraid his wares would not be to your liking.”

“And you hold yourself as a judge as to your king’s tastes?” Leck says.

Death lowers his eyes, focuses on the desk in front of him, the tea, the ink blotter, the small things with which he busies himself. “My apologies, Lord King. I would not presume to know your mind.”

Leck folds his hands together. He has the long fingers and delicately veined hands of a surgeon. Death shudders at the thought. “Then it is settled,” he says. “Your brother will grace us with his presence.”

“Of course, Lord King,” Death says.

He cannot go to his brother. Leck can convince the guards that there is not librarian named Death, that any man they apprehend outside the castle gates is a treacherer and a murderer, sent by a foreign lord to take the good life of a kind king. He cannot go to them, no, but perhaps -

Death tears through his desk, his portfolio of letters, the cloth swatches his brother sends. He finds one, a piece of blue wool shot with yellow thread. Slowly, carefully, he picks the thread, winds it around his finger, an inch, then a foot. This will do - it must. The thread is worn, stained in places from the blue dye of the fabric. It frays in his hands.

He has a needle, a great fat one for repairing book bindings, almost too large for the fine mesh of the wool. Still, he sews. He pricks his finger, once, twice, blood on the thread, blood on the fabric. This is his message too. He consults his books, the simplest cipher he knows - his brother will not know what he is looking at. But it is not a message for the eye, but one for the hand. His brother’s wife, so quick, hands skimming over cloth, always. Does Leck’s power extend to her too? It must, somehow, but perhaps if Death is lucky, very lucky, and a little clever, he can penetrate the fog of her mind, just for a moment.

“Hide her,” it says, and “Leck lies.”

Death imagines them secreting the girl away, the docks at night, some visiting sailors from Lineid, a ship in the night, a bright future for his niece, far from here.

He writes a letter, addresses his sister-in-law by name, asks only for her to review the fabric, to send her opinion. It will do. It will have to. It must.


End file.
